


now i can fly

by aelxh23



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Coming Out, Episode: s15e16 Blood and Water, Family, Happy, Internal angst, Loneliness, M/M, levi's mom - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 22:30:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18303131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelxh23/pseuds/aelxh23
Summary: As we both sit down, exchanging awkward looks for a second, Mom finally speaks up, “You wanted to talk to me about something.”I blink, apparently a little out of it, “Huh…? Oh! Right! Yes!” My tendency to forget things I’ve been stressing about for months when it really matters has to be one of my least favourites, and that says a lot.Levi follows up on a promise he made to Nico on a post-I love you high.





	now i can fly

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is the first thing I've ever written for this site, and the first thing I've ever written that's even remotely on this kind of topic, but here we are. It's mostly for me but I hope people reading it enjoy reading it even half as much as I enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> I'm from the UK, so I'm a couple of episodes behind and I've just seen episode 16, which is why I'm doing this now and not like three weeks ago when the episode aired in the US. Also it's Mothers' Day here and I thought that was perfect timing. Anyway, sorry if any Americanisms aren't quite right, I really tried!
> 
> The title is from "Now I Can Fly", the RAIGN song that appeared in one of the very first Schmico scenes in 15x02!

Studies have shown that shower habits can be an indicator of loneliness. Spending more time than necessary, say, fifteen or twenty minutes even, with higher water temperatures, replicates the physical warmth of a person’s embrace where and when we’re lacking in that warmth.

Retrospectively, that makes a lot of things make sense. Particularly one of the many times I… the many times I showered back in high school? That doesn’t sound right, but… one of the many times back in the times of high school when I stood in the shower, the sounds of my mom and dad arguing over god knows what, faint and muffled in the background. No idea how long I was stood there, it’s not like I would wear my glasses in the shower, and the growing steam from the hot water did absolutely nothing to help, but I was pretty sure the digital clock on the other side of the bathroom showed a different hour to when I got in. So yeah, I was in there a while.

This isn’t a specific memory, it happened a bunch of times and I never really kept track. Retrospectively, it makes sense now that my dad walked out on us when I was 16. No goodbyes, not a word from him. It seemed like it came completely out of the blue back then, but when I think back to that memory, or any memory, really, my mom and my dad were never happy. 

It makes sense. My dad and I were never really that close either, my mom, for the most part, was the only person I ever had, for the longest time. We would talk a lot, we would laugh a lot, we would cook together, we did a lot. Sure, she was intense a lot of the time, but she was always there. She still is always there. 

That’s not to say I didn’t have any friends - for most of high school I was in a group of five, the outcasts, alternating between each other’s basements to play Dungeons and Dragons. Buuut, odd numbers, someone’s on the outside. And it was never explicitly said, but it was me. We all knew it was me. It made sense.

* * *

 

Fast forward around a decade, and it’s a completely different story. Waking up slowly to the cool, early springtime breeze in a bed that even after several months feels otherworldly levels of comfortable, next to a man (a man!) that I can say with all the power in my heart that I love. After several months, it still feels like this weird, weird dream, or like something out of a movie. Whatever, I’m not complaining.

About  _ that, _ anyway. I am complaining about the fact that I have to somehow get myself out of this bed a whole two hours before the complete diamond of a human being next to me does, and  _ then _ eat what is essentially a free, delicious breakfast  _ by myself, _ before making the entire  _ ten minute _ walk  _ by myself _ to the job I love. Okay, I’m totally not complaining. Up I get.

Up out of bed, as quietly as possible so as not to disturb Nico. My boyfriend. The man who just yesterday I eventually exchanged I love yous with. Nico. I just know I’ll never get tired of saying it, with saying his name, with everything. I turn around as I reach the bedroom door, take a glance at him sleeping so peacefully, and quietly make an exit.

His apartment is insane levels of clean, in spite of my shameless efforts to make a mark. It’s as tidy, organised, and ultimately as perfect as anyone would’ve expected. Everything is somehow always in the exact same place, which makes making coffee so easy. Grab a mug, grab the coffee, grab the milk, at this point, it’s pretty much muscle memory.

It’s only when I go to make myself a slice of toast that my good mood starts to slump. Right. I may have promised some things last night. Something along the lines of “I’m going to talk to her tomorrow, tell her everything, it’ll be fine!”. Everything’s fine when the gorgeous man you’re in love with tells you he loves you too. 

I sigh loudly to myself. Why is it so difficult for me to just… speak? Say words, and everything. It’s my mom, of all people, she’s probably going to care the least about this. Well,  _ care _ is poor choice of words… she’ll be fine. Right? Ridiculous what if scenarios have been swirling around my head for the last few months, and I know they’re ridiculous, of course they’re ridiculous, but on they go. They’ll keep swirling, like some… like some messed up thing in the sea, I don’t know. I’m being ridiculous.

I repeat those words to myself a number of times, seemingly in the hundreds, as I take out my phone and go to text Mom. 

_ Will be back from work at 7 tonight. Need to talk x _

I stare at the message, then at the send button, and shake my head. I don’t know why I’m thinking about this so much, it’s  _ Mom. _ I tinker and tweak the message for what feels like an hour, but is probably a couple of minutes, before finally coming to the closest thing I’ll get to sure on something, groan a little, and press send.

_ Will be home at 7. Can we talk then? Xx _

Sent. Typically for Mom, I hear my phone buzz no more than twenty seconds later, and then again shortly after, and I let out a small chuckle.

_ Pf course - I;ll makae idnner xx _

_ Of course - I’ll make dinner* sorry, I got excited xx _

I smile nervously to myself. I’ve done as much as I can right now, so I push any swirling to the back of my mind and go about the start of my day. 

I’m both pleasantly and a little selfishly unpleasantly surprised that I don’t manage to wake Nico up before leaving, despite all of my sighing and groaning, but I leave with plenty of time to get to the hospital. Here’s to twelve hours of distraction.

* * *

The working day goes somewhat seamlessly for Grey Sloan standards. A little slow in places, but I’m actually let out of the hospital over an hour earlier than I was supposed to leave in a twist of good fortune. I’ve been having more of those lately. I won’t complain.

I take my phone out to check the time,  _ 17:51 _ . Over an hour early, but that’s okay. It’s greaaaat. Mom’s place is around a thirty minute walk, which gives me plenty of time to freak out, have several crises and breakdowns and tell myself I’m okay. It’s fine.

The next thirty minutes largely consists of the same swirling that was going around my head this morning, but more and more frantic. At least when I was working I had some kind of distraction, but this… My pace alternates between walking quicker, to get it over and done with, because  _ I’m fine, _ and walking much, much slower in an attempt to retreat because I’m absolutely not fine. 

The thirty minute walk wasn’t long enough, and before long I found myself at the front door. I fumble around for a minute before finding my keys, and call “Hi Mom!” as I enter.

I turn around to see Mom, in the kitchen, frantically rushing between three different pots. She jumps upon hearing my call and turns to me, exclaiming, “Oh!”. She smiles between rushed breaths, “You-you’re early!”

I laugh softly and smile back, “Surprise!” I mockingly exclaim, doing a mini animated hand gesture, “I got off work earlier than I expected,” I turn to look at the chaos in the kitchen, “...is that okay?”

“Of course, of course!” Mom rushes towards me and pulls me in for a hug. I accept that I’m not the tallest of people, but I’m still taller than her, and she rests her head on my shoulder, “I feel like I haven’t seen much of you lately…”

She pulls out of the hug and looks at me, as though she were expecting an explanation. I babble, wave my arms around a little and shrug, “I’ve been… busy, I guess… busy job and everything.” I chuckle unconvincingly, and I know just how unconvincing it is, because she raises an eyebrow at me.

“Are you okay?” she asks, her bright, warming smile turning quickly to a concerned frown, “You seem…” she then pauses, hesitating as she tries to find the right word, “You seem off.”

I smile again, “I’m fine, Mom, really.” I look back to the kitchen and suddenly my smile turns to a frown too, “...but whatever’s going on in the kitchen is definitely not fine.” Mom sharply turns her head in panic at one of the pans boiling over, and rushes back to it. I can hear her repeated cries of “No no no!” as she returns to the multiple pots and pans she has going on simultaneously. 

“Need a hand?” I ask with a small smirk, slowly walking towards the kitchen. I breathe in the air and realise exactly what she’s making, “...is that fish pie?”

Mom, at this point on her knees trying to pick something up off the floor, looks up at me sheepishly, “Your favourite as a kid...  I appear to have lost my touch for it in my old age,” she laughs defeatedly. 

My smile grows, and I exhale in sheer surprise, “I can’t believe you…” I trail off before laughing again, “How long has it been since we’ve had fish pie?”

“Too long!” Mom shouts and the two of us erupt into laughter, seemingly ignoring the growing mess on the kitchen counter in front of us. Mom continues, “And it looks like it’ll be even longer, because this is ruined...” She sighs.

All I can do is smile at her, “There’s always next time.” 

Mom suddenly laughs bitterly, “When will next time be? I never see you anymore!” She looks at me and sighs again, “I know you’re busy and you’re doing things, you’re doing amazing things, I just… I thought I’d see you more, what with you living here and everything…”

I frown, “Mom… I’m sorry…”

“It’s not your fault,” she smiles sadly, “I can’t even imagine the things you do every day, and it’s amazing, I just… I wanted it to be special, I’m being stupid, it’s fine.” She shakes her head as she stands up properly, “Ignore me, I’m gonna go sort out… whatever this mess is, and we can talk about whatever we’re gonna do after. Just… give me a minute.” She quickly turns and leaves the kitchen, and I sigh again.

I look over at the kitchen counter again, let’s sort out this mess. I can’t help but mockingly think to myself, as I clean up,  _ God, what did she do to those potatoes? _ It serves as a welcome distraction from a problem that very clearly needs to be solved.

* * *

One minute turns to ten, which feels much longer, and I finish cleaning up. Mom is obviously not okay, so I slowly tiptoe towards the room I think she ran into, and call, “Mom?”

She hurriedly lets out a “Yeah” and I let myself into the room. I can tell she had been crying but seems to have stopped. Regardless I ask, “Mom… are you okay?”

Mom nods, giving a slightly sad smile, “I ordered pizza,” she suddenly grins excitedly, “It’s no fish pie, but I ordered your favourite! Pepperoni, mushroom, peppers, onion.”

I smile back, “Sounds great.”

Mom then stands up, “Well, we have thirty minutes until that gets here… we should catch up! Let’s go back to the front room, then we can...” She trails off, and smiles at me again, before leaving the room to sit in the front room, and I follow.

As we both sit down, exchanging awkward looks for a second, Mom finally speaks up, “You wanted to talk to me about something.”

I blink, apparently a little out of it, “Huh…? Oh! Right! Yes!” My tendency to forget things I’ve been stressing about for months when it really matters has to be one of my least favourites, and that says a lot. 

“Well, uh…” I appear to clear my throat but in reality it’s just a poor attempt at delaying the inevitable, “Yes, I need to… I need to say something, and it’s…”

As a habitual worrier, Mom interjects at this point, “Are you sick? Has something happened? Are you o-”

“Mom,” I interrupt again, “I’m fine.” I crack a nervous smile, “I just… I need to say this… this thing, and it’s not gonna be easy, so could you maybe just... “ I try to find the right way to phrase it so that I don’t upset her, but tact is not something I’m particularly strong with, “Let me say it.”

Mom looks slightly taken aback, but she nods and smiles, “Of course. Go on.”

“I…” I clear my throat again, and gulp, and hesitate for what feels like a hugely uncomfortable amount of time, “...I’ve been seeing someone.”

The look on Mom’s face changes markedly from pure worry and distress to an unreadable amalgamation of relief, happiness, sadness and confusion. But she doesn’t say anything, so I continue, “For, like, my entire life, I’ve always felt like… like I was some sort of outsider or outcast. Like the world I was living in was somehow different to the world everyone else was living in. I mean, I had friends, and I had you, and I guess I had Dad to some small extent, but… I never really felt like I belonged… anywhere.”

“And I never felt like I was really a person… and it felt like everyone saw me as some kind of thing that should be avoided at all costs,” I laugh at myself, sharing a little bit more than I wanted to but hell, I’ve started now, let’s not stop, “At school, I was always, ‘Levi Schmitt: Weird nerd’, or ‘Levi Schmitt: Cannot have a conversation to save his life’, or ‘Levi Schmitt: Peed himself in class when he was 8’.”

“Then I became a sub-i at Grey Sloan and I quickly became, ‘Glasses: Dropped his glasses inside a patient’, or ‘Glasses: That intern that hates blood’, or ‘Glasses: Unbelievably clumsy, how the hell is he still here’.” Again, I laugh. It’s a nice way to break up the word vomit. 

“I’ve always been seen a joke, somehow worse than everybody else regardless of how hard I tried or whatever I did.” At this point, I can feel myself starting to choke up, and Mom reaches out her hand to grab mine and comfort me, but I quickly retract, “Sorry, if I do  _ that, _ I’m gonna finish here and not say the thing I actually have to say.” I laugh again, and Mom nods in somewhat understanding, though still confused at what the hell it is I’m trying to say.

“People always treated me like a joke, even my friends, really, and for so long, I believed them. Until I met… this person. They just… they saw something in me, that not even I saw.” Definitely not trying very hard not to cry. “And I just… for the first time in my life I actually feel like I’m a person, like I’m not some kind of joke, like I can actually do something without making a mistake, but also that it’s okay if I do make a mistake, because it won’t define me anymore.”

Oh and now Mom’s trying not to cry too. This is going well. “A-Anyways… what I’m trying to say, amongst all of that, is that… I’m happy,” I pause for a second, and Mom looks as though she’s about to speak, “And I’m gay.”

That definitely stopped whatever she was about to say, “Uh… not in the way that those two words mean the same thing… I mean, I like guys,” I stop to correct myself, “I love… I love guys, the man I love is a guy…”

I look at Mom briefly, and then down at the ground. Oh god oh god oh god oh god. Swirling cycles of doom return in the five seconds of silence that feel like an eternity, until I feel her hand on mine again. 

“That’s… that’s the thing?” she asks, hands wiping her eyes, “Oh baby…” She pulls me closer to her, “As long as you’re happy - that can be with a girl, with a guy, with someone in between, with your friends, on your own with fifteen cats if you really want,” we both laugh a little in between tears, “As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”

I can feel the tension slip away from my body like a giant weight. She continues, “I spent three decades of my life in a loveless love… me and your father… we were never happy. The only good thing I got from him was you… and I know I’m overprotective and a little obsessive, but that’s only because I don’t wanna lose you… I can’t lose you…”

“I don’t wanna lose you,” I manage to say between my tears, and she pulls me in for a proper hug.

“This world is a terrifying place that seems to get darker and darker every day,” Mom continues as she starts to stroke my hair, “You have to take every little piece of joy, every little piece of light, that you can. And don’t let anybody tell you can’t have it, or that you don’t deserve it, because you do. You really, really do. My sweet, smart, funny, perfect baby…”

And with that, the room is filled with nothing but happy weeps and pathetic little snivels for about five minutes, until I finally break the silence of word.

“Uh,” I clear my throat again, “...How long until the pizza?”

Mom laughs, and looks up at the clock. She pinches her face as she tries to guess, “...Ten minutes?”

“Okay,” I suddenly stand myself up and shake a little, “I  _ really _ need a shower.” I turn to head to the bathroom.

“Well I didn’t wanna say,” Mom giggles, and I turn back to her and imitate an offended scowl, “You sure you have time? I remember you used to take  _ aaaaages _ in the shower.” She laughs some more.

I smile at her and nod, “I’ll be quick.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! As I said, I'm from the UK, but I really tried to make this as "authentic" as possible (I used Google to make sure that the food choices were a thing in the US too). I see SO MUCH of myself in Levi's character and he's a character I really enjoy writing so if time allows me to I'd love to write more on him and Nico as a couple but I haven't done any real love fic writing since I was like 11 and that is not a time I'd like to revisit.
> 
> Anyway, thank you again!


End file.
